WATERLOO, Iowa - Ron Paul, none of the bravado of his Republican presidential rivals. At a town hall meeting here on Wednesday afternoon, he spoke for 35 minutes and then immediately apologized. "Hopefully I have not scared you off," Mr. Paul, a congressman from Texas, said in a soft voice and a characteristic shoulder.
Not likely.
In his second consecutive run for the Republican nomination, Mr. Paul is better known, better organized and on track for what could be a top-three finish at the Ames straw poll on Saturday.
"I'm not predicting, I know we can win or something," Mr. Paul told a room of about 75 people in this town in northeastern Iowa.
In fact, rival campaigns suggest that they believe that Mr. Paul was the straw poll win, on the strength of his support among libertarians, students and an increasing number of traditional Republicans who are beginning to agree with the years of criticism Mr. Paul's public spending and federal debt.
Asked if he felt justified because of the warnings he had long preached of a coming debt crisis for the country feels, he said he was not on the agenda to gloat. "I do not think you need to toot your own horn," he said.
His son, Rand, a freshman senator from Kentucky, disagrees.
"We need to gloat," says Senator Paul, campaigning in Iowa with his father. "The slogan for the campaign should be," Ron Paul was right! "
Attending a Ron Paul event is not so very different from attending a lecture on the history and economy. For more than a half hour, Mr. Paul discussed the history of the gold standard, Eisenhower spoke of the election and its impact on the nation's foreign policy and railed against U.S. involvement in global conflicts.
Really, he got applause and expressions of approval.
"Yes sir!" One man screamed as Mr. Paul insisted that he as president would pull America out of the United Nations.
Asked to respond to Republican voters who might think that he can not win in a head-to-head race against Obama, Mr Paul dismissed the concern, saying that voters do not fear that a vote for him is a lost voice.
"Wasting a vote may vote for someone you do not really believe in," he said.
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